Planning Advice Note 70: electronic planning service delivery

CUSTOMER & STAKEHOLDER REQUIREMENTS

65. Consideration of user requirements is essential to any e-planning project. The ICT skills of users will vary as will the sophistication and performance of the ICT equipment being deployed, so it is important that online e-planning systems are easy to use and operate satisfactorily on home computers and dial-up connections.

66. Download times need to be considered, particularly when placing a proposals map online. A judgement has to be made on the length of time people will find acceptable to wait for a proposals map to be downloaded, this will be a particularly important issue in areas where the telecommunications network is less advanced. Most graphic file formats allow you to choose the level of compression. Reducing the size of files increases the download speed but reduces image quality. This has resulted in some planning authorities deciding to split a document into separate files. Zipped files can be used to save time downloading large documents, although unzipped files should also be provided, as not all users have the required software to read them.